jazfandomcom-20200216-history
Blue Note Records History
}} The Birth of a Record Label : |Alfred Lion Alfred Lion,BlueNote History,BlueNote.com}} Alfred Lion first heard jazz as a young boy in Berlin. He settled in New York in 1937, and in 1939 recorded pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis in a one-day session in a rented studio. The Blue Note label was originally Lion, largely alone. Ironically, it was Max Margulis, a self-described Communist, writer, aspiring musician, photographer, and influential member of the New York arts scene in the late 1930s who funded the project. : Margulis was only briefly involved in Blue Note. At the end of 1939, Lion's childhood friend Francis Wolff caught the last boat out of Nazi-controlled Germany bound for America. Wolff found employment at a photographic studio and joined forces with Lion, producing albums at night to develop Blue Note's recordings of hot jazz and their swingtet phase. : On December 23 of that year, Lion attended the celebrated From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall. The power, soul and beauty of boogie woogie piano masters Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis rocked the stage. It gripped Lion as well, inspiring him to start his own record label. : Max Margulis, a communist writer, photographer, and member of the avant-garde arts scene, ironically supplied the start-up capital for this unusual capitalist venture into recording what was called "hot jazz" at the time, the precusor to BeBop : Exactly two weeks later, on January 6 at 2 p.m. in the afternoon, Lion brought both Pianists into a studio to record an album. They took turns at the one piano, recording four solos each before relinquishing the bench to the other man. The long session ended with two stunning duets. : : Blue Note Records was born. First Major Recording : The company's first hit, recorded in 1939, was Sidney Bechet's recording of "Summertime". : Aside from the huge cachet that the little label received from landing such a major recording artist, the release was notable for being issued on a 12" 78rpm record instead of the then standard 10" owing to its length. : It was clear that Blue Note was going to walk the walk of the manifesto that Lion published around the same time of the Bechet release: Blue Note Succeeds by Catering to Its Artists : Musicians were supplied with alcoholic refreshments, food, and cigarettes, and often recorded in the early hours of the morning, after their evening's work in clubs and bars had finished. The label soon became known for treating musicians uncommonly well: Setting up recording sessions at congenial times, and allowing them to be involved in all aspects of the record's production. : Blue Note made a name for itself by being willing to record artists that most other labels would consider to be uncommercial, or who had temperaments or legal issues with drugs that might have locked them out of most other labels. This allowed them to work with and develop talents like Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dexter Gordon. : Their willingness to pursue the artistic avenues of the musicians rather than dictate what was fashionable or profitable at any particular moment brought them artists like Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie and Horace Silver to name a few. }} Revolutionary Cover Art : Album covers were more of an afterthought until Blue Note turned them into high art and social commentary. Using the studio photographs of producer Francis Wolff the graphic designers of Blue Note broke many common taboos about placing African-American performers on record covers. Instead of the sanitized covers of a Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald album, where the performers usually wore tuxedos and evening gowns, Blue Note covers featured musicians as they were, "behind the scenes," with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, wearing street clothing, etc. The Musical Styles of Blue Note : When Blue Note was founded, its primary focus was hot jazz and swingtet, the movement moving away from the big band sound and moving back towards smaller combos with more emphasis on solos and new jazz styles. More importantly, though, Lion and Wolff were after what was being called "the black sound," African-American musicians who played in all-black bands that were breaking ranks from the fusion of concert band and jazz that was Big Band. : That focus would change over the decades to several other sub-genres including BeBop and Hard Bop. }} The Blue Note Sound Evolves An Attractive Style of Producing :An important difference between Blue Note and other independent labels like Prestige Records was that musicians were paid for rehearsal time prior to the recording session; this helped ensure a better end result on the record. : : Prestige producer Bob Porter once said that "The difference between Blue Note and Prestige is two days rehearsal."1 Organist Jimmy Smith was signed in 1956, and performed on the label's first 12" LP album of new recordings. The Van Gelder Sound : Engineer Rudy Van Gelder recorded most Blue Note releases from 1953 until the late sixties, and his often-praised engineering was, in its own way, as important and revolutionary as the music. : : In 1952, Alfred Lion heard a Triumph recording that saxophonist-composer Gil Melle had done with engineer Rudy Van Gelder at his parents' home in Hackensack, New Jersey. Van Gelder had a recorded it on a set-up in their living room. : : Blue Note had always been known for its superior sound and balance, but in Van Gelder, Lion had found an intelligent, kindred soul from whom he could extract an ideal sound. : : Van Gelder engineered many of the major jazz recordings of the 1950s and the 1960s for many labels, but at Blue Note he was given more free reign, and his work dovetails with the top-of-the-line recording artists with whom he worked into a sound that had little parallel at other labels, even ones where Van Gelder also worked. The Mid-1950s: The Deepest Talent Pool : By 1954, Blue Note naturally gravitated toward a bullpen of talent: A stable of leaders and sidemen mixed and matched on different albums . Leaders often would appear on each other's projects as sidemen, adding to the interest value of the album for fans. Sidemen would be groomed to grow into leaders. : : The mid to late fifties saw debut recordings for Blue Note by, amongst others, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Herbie Nichols, Sonny Clark, Kenny Dorham, Kenny Burrell, Jackie McLean, Donald Byrd and Lou Donaldson. Sonny Rollins recorded for the label in 1956 and 1957 and Bud Powell briefly returned. John Coltrane's Blue Train, and Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else (featuring Miles Davis in one of his last supporting roles) were guest appearances on the label. : : Blue Note was by then recording a mixture of established acts (Rollins, Adderley) and artists who in some cases had recorded before, but often produced performances for the label which by far exceeded earlier recordings in quality. "Blue Train" is often considered to be the first significant recording by Coltrane as a leader. The Blue Note Sound: The Birth of the Jazz Messengers : It was, though, late in 1954, Lion's examination of the career of pianist Horace Silver that created a band that would define the Blue Note sound, a blend of the language of BeBop with the warm roots of blues and gospel music that would come to be defined as "soul music" or "soul." : : Lion felt that Silver should do a record with horns. He and Silver worked up the band's roster: Kenny Dorham (Trumpet), Hank Mobley (Tenor Saxophone), Doug Watkins (Bass), and Art Blakey (Drums). : : The date went so well that these five men decided on a common purpose and formed a co-operative band called The Jazz Messengers. The group's idea was to present soulful modern jazz. It was drummer Blakey, not Silver, who took the leadership role in the group and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers was born. : : It worked beyond anyone's expectations and was received well both critically and at record store cash registers. It became, with Van Gelder's engineering, the Blue Note sound. : : By1956 all of the pieces, from producing to engineering to album art, were in place that gave the label its unique identity. : : Blue Note dominated the artistic and commercial courses of jazz for more than a decade after that. : : "We established a style," said Wolff, "including recording, pressing and covers. The details made the difference."Blue Note History,http://www.bluenote.com/History.aspx, BlueNote.com Developing Talent & Risk Taking : Lion and Wolff had developed a formula, and friendships, that brought some of the biggest names in modern Jazz to Blue Note Records' front door. They also developed talent from the ground up, and took on "restoration" projects with artists and acts whose careers had been side-tracked or derailed. Jimmy Smith : Lion and Wolff used their ears and a lot of shoe leather to find those musicians who, put on the pedestal of the free-thinking and independent Blue Note Label, would get a showcase for their talents that would transform them from curiously off-beat musicians in the search of their own voice into jazz legends of their instrument. : }} : In the late 1950s, Babs Gonzales and other musicians told Lion and Wolff to find Jimmy Smith, a pianist who was woodshedding for over a year on a rented Hammond organ in the corner of a warehouse in Philadelphia. : "I first heard Jimmy Smith at Small's Paradise in January of 1956," said Frank Wolff in an interview in 1969. "It was his first gig in New York. He was a stunning sight. A man in convulsions: Face contorted, crouched over in apparent agony, his fingers flying, his feet dancing over the pedals. The air was filled with waves of sound I had never heard before. The noise was shattering. A few people sat around, puzzled, but impressed. He came off the stand, smiling, the sweat dripping all over him. 'So what do you think?' 'Yeah', I said. That's all I could say. Alfred Lion had already made up his mind." The Return of Dexter Gordon : The early sixties saw Dexter Gordon join the label. Gordon was a saxophonist from the BeBop era who had spent several years in prison for narcotics possesion. : After his release from incarceration, he began his ex-patriot career in Europe, making several albums for Blue Note over a five year period there. : Gordon also appeared on the debut album by Herbie Hancock, part of the next generation of Blue Note. Next Generation Emerges from the Miles Davis Quintet : By the mid sixties, all four of the younger members of the Miles Davis quintet which included Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams were recording for the label. Hancock and Shorter in particular produced a succession of superb albums in a mix of styles. : Carter did not actually record under his own name until the label's revival in the 1980s, but played double bass on many other musicians' sessions. Many of these also included Freddie Hubbard, a trumpeter who also recorded for the label as a leader. : The Blue Note bullpen system continued successfully in the sixties, with Hubbard, Hancock, Carter, Grant Green, Joe Henderson, Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley and many others leading on some albums, and recording as sidemen on others. Commercial Challenges : Entering the 1960s the commercialization of music distribution continued to consolidate in fewer hands, and the radio became the dominant exposure point for popular music. Jazz's radio footprint was shrinking as Rock and Roll became king. Blue Note came under increasing pressure to produce hit singles off of their albums. : Lee Morgan had a big hit in 1963 with The Sidewinder the title track of the album of the same name. Horace Silver had another runaway in 1964 with Song for My Father. : Lion had to line up a lead "hit" or hit-capable single at the top of Blue Note albums of this era to try to reach for heavy airplay in the United States. The Avant Garde : The Beatnik generation continued pushing the envelope artistically into the early 1960s, when Avant Garde jazz was evolved. Although many of the acts on Blue Note were recording jazz for a wide audience, the label also documented some of the emerging avant-garde and free jazz players, moving cautiously into the style. : A lot of chaotic and inferior music was passing for art during the Avant Garde era. Still, Lion and Wolff were able to record the most substantial artists of the sub-genre. : Hard Bop artist Jackie McLean's 1963 group crossed over with several notable avant-garde albums including One Step Beyond and Destination Out. McLean's band, including Grachan Moncur, Bobby Hutcherson and Tony Williams all recorded their own albums as well. : Tony's albums led to an association for Blue Note with Sam Rivers. There were also impressive works by Larry Young and Andrew Hill as well as the grand old masters of the avant-garde: Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman. : : Though these avant-garde records did not sell as well as some other Blue Note releases, Lion thought it was important to document new developments in jazz. Other Artists Appearing on Blue Note : Andrew Hill, a highly individual pianist, made many albums for the label, one featuring multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy. Dolphy's Out to Lunch!, featuring a celebrated cover by Reid Miles, is perhaps his most well-known album. Saxophonist Ornette Coleman released two albums recorded with a trio in a Stockholm club, and three studio albums, including The Empty Foxhole, with his ten-year-old son Denardo Coleman on drums. Pianist Cecil Taylor recorded a brace of albums for Blue Note, and saxophonist Sam Rivers, drummer Tony Williams, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson and organist Larry Young also recorded albums which diverged from the "hard bop" style usually associated with the label. Quality Productions Can't Halt Blue Note's Downward Spiral }} : The consolidation and the explosion of Rock, Folk, Rhythm and Blues, and Soul music in the mid-1960s began to dry up not only performance spaces but pools of performers, as many musical artists went in search of other more profitable or more interesting genres. Many followed the money and fame and opportunity. Jazz acts signed exclusive deals for bigger money, and sought out labels that could insure them solid air play on the dwindling number of Jazz radio stations. This was not the fertile creative ground that gave birth to BeBop and Blue Note. : Liberty Records made Lion an offer to buy the label in 1965. Lion and Wolff grabbed it. Both stayed on, but, by 1967, health problems forced Lion to retire. Wolff and Duke Pearson divided up the producing for Blue Note. : Frank Wolff died in 1971. Pearson brought in the Mizell Brothers, a duo of Howard University educated men who came to Blue Note to establish themselves as producers in their own right. : Larry Mizell had little entertainment experience but Alphonzo "Fonce" Mizell was a member of The Corporation the hit-making machine writing and producing for the Jackson 5 that consisted of Motown founder Berry Gordy, writer-producers Deke Richards, who brought Fonce to The Company, and Freddie Perren, a childhood friend, band mate and classmate of the Mizells both in high school and at Howard who also later worked for Sky High Productions. : Together they produced fusion jazz albums for Blue Note as Sky High Productions. They produced Donald Byrd's Black Byrd in 1972 which was a big hit for the label and set the tone for Blue Note records of the 1970s. : They went on to team up with Byrd for his albums Street Lady (1973), Stepping into Tomorrow (1974), Places and Spaces (1975) and Caricatures (1976) : Sky High produced Bobbi Humphrey's Blacks and Blues (1973), Satin Doll (1974) and Fancy Dancer (1975). Humphrey was brought to the label by Lee Morgan. They also produced Johnny "Hammond" Smith's Gambler's Life (1974) and Gears (1975) for Blue Note. : The last active Blue Note artist was Horace Silver, who recorded for the label from 1952 until 1980. Liberty was swallowed up in a merger with United Artists Records, which in turn came under control of Capitol Records. : For a time, the Blue Note label survived through a program of reissues and previously unreleased material that then Blue Note executive Charlie Lourie and Michael Cuscuna started in 1975. That program survived sporadically until 1981. : EMI took over Capitol, and the Blue Note label, and then shut it down. The Blue Note Revival Movement : In 1982 Lourie and Cuscuna launched Mosaic Records as means of trying to convince Capitol management to restart Blue Note. They released more of the reissues which still bear the Mosaic label to this day, including complete sets of recordings on CD by artists like Thelonius Monk, Albert Ammons-Meade, Lux Lewis and Lou Donaldson. Blue Note Rises from the Ashes in a New Form : EMI hired Bruce Lundvall in mid 1984 to revive the Blue Note label in the United States. The label was relaunched in February, 1985, with a "One Night With Blue Note" concert of all-star bands composed of new and old Blue Note artists at New York's Town Hall. : Blue Note was revived, but it was not reborn. The label was fused with several of EMI's other recording efforts in other genres. : It has gone on in the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s and the 2010s to record many of the world's top jazz artists who still see great prestige and cachet in the Blue Note name being associated with their work. Some of the many artists recording for Blue Note over the last 30 years include Wynton Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin,Nancy Wilson, Madlib, T-Bone Walker and its stabs at a house-ensemble band, The Blue Note 7 and Blue Note Blend. : The most successful, by sales, though, artist that Lundvall developed was a new raw talent, vocalist, pianist, and guitarist Norah Jones. Her initial album recording, in spite of her amazing voice, was something of a disaster, so brought in producing legend Arif Mardin, who worked with her until both he and Jones walked away with two of the four GRAMMY® awards which the album received, and 28 million albums sold for Blue Note. It was easily the biggest and most main-stream work that Blue Note had done in its history. Hear Lundvall tell the story in the video below: : Lundvall managed to recapture much of the integrity and the studio artistry of the early days of the label. The successes of Jones' numbers also allowed Blue Note more flexibility to develop other meaningful artists under the EMI management system. : The days of the New York jazz scene that lasted from the 1930s until the dawn of Rock and Roll, though, which gave birth to an explosive amount of modern jazz music, and the immense freedom which Lion and Wolff had used to bring the top talents of the day into one collaborative, creative effort, will probably never re-materialize in the modern day. : The early morning jam sessions, the artistic freedoms, and the risk-taking on good, ground-breaking but unprofitable music for the sake of presenting it to the world, as Lion and Wolff did with Monk and so many other artists, is a part of Blue Note's storied history. Notes